HKU Bulletin September 2007 (Vol. 9 No. 1)

8 9 Unlocking the Secret to Happiness P hilosophers down the ages have pondered the secrets of happiness, sometimes questioning both its value and its existence. Now scientists are close to unlocking its code and might even increase our collective sense of well-being in the process. Thanks to the Chinese perspective, our understanding of that fleeting emotion has been greatly enhanced. Contributing to that knowledge is Dr Samuel Ho Mun Yin, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, who runs a Positive Psychology Laboratory in the Department. As a proponent of the new positive psychology movement Ho has been researching the Chinese idea of happiness. As he said: “Research on happiness is not new to psychology. There have been many psychologists doing it for some time, like Professor Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, who has been researching what he calls subjective well-being. “So well before we had a term called positive psychology many psychologists were doing a lot of interesting research in this area. Hope, optimism, forgiveness have all been studied for many years.” But the Chinese perspective is slightly different. “The western model of psychotherapy is a remedial model,” explained Ho. “This means you have a problem and we try to fix it. Chinese philosophy, however, is more focused on prevention, on helping you cultivate a better physical and psychological ideal. That is achieved through daily activities like tai chi and wellness activities. The Chinese philosophy is about cultivating a balance in your life and good human relationships, to cope with daily stress and disease.” The western model of happiness tends to be intra- individual, in which patients reflect on their own lives to measure happiness. Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, tends to be more inter-personal. “When I ask my patients whether they are happy or not sometimes it’s very difficult to answer. If I ask whether their wife or son is happy it is easier to answer. So in the Chinese collective culture we focus on the collective self,” said Ho. In 2000, when Diener asked people in 27 nations whether they were happy or not, many of the Chinese said happiness was not important to them. However their overall happiness level was not particularly low, despite the fact that their purchasing power parity was among the lowest of all nations included in the study ( Ho and Cheung, 2007 ). “Our hypothesis to explain the above findings is that in Chinese culture, if we know that those around us are happy that will contribute to our own individual happiness.” So Ho’s use of Chinese philosophy has enhanced the current western model of happiness, which accepts that making others happy can contribute to our own sense of well- being. He is now applying this philosophy to psychotherapy treatment for Chinese patients. “If you are physically sick and visit a Chinese herbalist they will say you need to build up your immunity. So it’s a more long term holistic kind of care. In positive psychology, also, we focus on your strengths so that you can build on them.” To discover their strengths patients are asked to fill in a lengthy questionnaire which will reveal their 24 character strengths in descending order. “So if a patient is depressed we might try to help them discover their character strengths, coach them to use these strengths.” “The preliminary results from Hong Kong are promising,” he said. “We are pretty sure that Positive Psychotherapy Treatment (PPT) will not produce any negative side-effects. But some people receive PPT better than others and we are wondering if we can integrate it with traditional psychological treatments. People are happy to discover their own strengths so they are more likely to come back. Compliance is therefore quite high.” The study will now be repeated in three Chinese cities, followed by a long term follow up. “We hope when people use their strengths more they get more positive feedback and feel more positive and when they attend to their positive feelings they become happier. This is not just for depressed people, if we can help normal people to become happier there is a lot of data to show that they become more productive, healthier and more caring to society.” A Chinese website has been launched and plans to make it multi-lingual are in the pipeline, its address is www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ Reference Ho M.Y. and Cheung M.W.L. (2007). Using the combined etic- emic approach to develop a measurement of interpersonal subjective well-being in Chinese populations, In: Ong, Anthony D. van Dulmen, Manfred H. M., Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology. New York, USA, Oxford University Press, 139-152. RESEARCH